


holiday love

by delurks



Series: beyond the borderlands [8]
Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Alternate Universe, Borderlandscast, F/F, Gen, Mistletoe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 22:59:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5516417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delurks/pseuds/delurks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>ravs doesn’t usually celebrate mercenary day whenever it rolls around. it’s a pandoran tradition he’s been skipping out on for years. this year though, he decides to do things a little differently by putting up mistletoe in the crooked caber.</p><p>what could possibly go wrong? the correct answer is: not a lot, but one can never tell in advance with these things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	holiday love

**Author's Note:**

> happy holidays <3

Every year, Mercenary Day comes and goes. It’s wholly uneventful, as everybody who visits the Crooked Caber gets completely drunk out of their skulls or are hiding in their houses, getting drunk in the safety of their homes instead. Either way, everyone becomes placid by the end of the evening, staggering back home or being hefted by friends to be dropped off.

For the past few years, Ravs has been ambivalent about Mercenary Day. It’s one of the traditions on Pandora that actually has some merit behind it. 

Mercenaries and freelancers could bitch, whine and moan all they wanted to from the lack of pay on said day but they couldn’t deny it brought them good publicity, courtesy of Dahl starting said tradition (under the paper-thin guise of a promotion).

He’s not going to make the tradition miserable for anybody who enjoys it so he puts on his best, most charming smile and patiently weathers the day until closing time, when he can retreat to his own room. 

In a way, he’s glad that his exhaustion keeps him in check or else he’d end up supremely drunk to the point of blacking out. Even though he enjoys the occasional drink, he’s never liked taking it to that extreme, preferring to maintain a firm, chronological grasp on events at all times.

Paradoxically, the arrival of Mercenary Day is one of the rare times he can cut himself some slack, temporarily closing the Crooked Caber in the days that follow and allow himself some degree of freedom.

Nobody’s ever complained (likely sleeping or working off their massive hangovers) about it, so every year, for at least a day, Ravs locks the Crooked Caber and goes to visit friends who are scattered here and there on the east and west coast of Pandora. 

Sometimes Ravs likes to shake things up a little and show up unannounced on their doorstep. He remembers giving Zylus having a minor heart attack one year, spending a peaceful evening sharing dinner and swapping stories with him.

In another year, he’d come dangerously close to being shot in the head by Daltos, only for him to laugh and invite him in for drinks and a round of poker with him and his lieutenants.

It’s heart-warming to have people who are happy to host him instead of the other way around.

Ever since Teep showed up, Ravs actually has company to get drunk with in Sanctuary Hole, so he hadn't needed to bother anyone with his random visits since then. What he can’t really deny is that even with Teep’s company, it’s just another consecutive year of Rythian being a no-show. 

Not that he has anything against Teep, of course; Teep proves less acerbic as the night wears on, also possibly missing Rythian (but it’s hard to tell with them even if Ravs has known them just as long). Saying the night drags on would be insulting to the both of them, so Ravs tries not to. 

They talk about inconsequential things, avoiding all talk of the past (even though they’ve never believed in superstitions), managing to navigate around the unspoken, gaping hole that Rythian once filled.

This year is different: Ravs keeps the Crooked Caber open. It’s to mark the year Rythian came back from his wanderings, looking a little worse for wear but he’s alive, now in the company of friends. He hasn’t wandered off since (not even once), letting them ward off the misery that once ate away at him from the inside like an old wound left to fester.

It’s been a good year and in celebration, Ravs digs out the mistletoe and hangs it up above the counter before people arrive at the Crooked Caber for the planned party. 

He’s careful never to stand under the damn thing himself, painfully aware that there are more than a handful of people who’d like to claim the honour of stealing a kiss from him.

That said, everybody _knows_ what goes on under the mistletoe; it’s one of those things imported from another world, one of the tiny imperceptible traditions that now goes hand-in-hand with Mercenary Day that nobody can quite trace back through history.

Almost everybody Ravs knows (with the exception of a few unfamiliar faces, like the man with a greyish pallor currently wearing beaglepuss glasses) is currently celebrating in his bar. To say that Ravs is happy is an understatement.

The jukebox that somebody had brought along (likely Zylus because it just seems like something he’d do and he’s the only person with a bottomless pit of an inventory to be able to pull it off) is blaring songs at full volume.

There’s a few troublemakers milling about (Hat Corp. members, especially) but they appear to be keeping quiet, respecting the holiday and the silent truce in place. He’s also keeping an eye out for prospective people who could be coaxed to stand under the mistletoe.

Only the people who are truly aware of it (and know he’s waiting for the chance to shove another unsuspecting person under it) keep a wide berth.

Lalna is not one of those people. He slides into the empty space in front of Ravs just as someone departs with their drinks. Lalna is grinning, a little pink in the face from the cold and drinks. Ravs makes up an excuse about leaving his spot to replenish the barrels under the counter, slipping into the crowd.

Nilesy takes over the spot like the saint he is on busy evenings like this one. He’d been wearing an appropriately themed hat at the start of the night which has since gone missing.

With that, Ravs glances over the crowd, eventually spotting Rythian chatting to Zoeya. He smoothly intercepts Rythian during a lull in the conversation, steering him away by the elbow until he has Rythian standing where he needs to be. 

A little encouragement in the form of a light shove and Rythian stumbles forward; thankfully, he’s not holding a drink or else it’d have spilled. Ravs steps back, watching Rythian catch himself, straightening up and casts an annoyed glance over the crowd, seeking him out, no doubt having sharp words to say for that stunt.

Ultimately, his eyes travel up (Teep must have warned him, the _traitor_ ), catching sight of the mistletoe and Lalna, freezing when he mentally puts two and two together. 

Lalna breaks off the chat he’s having with Nilesy to look up as well, following suit a moment later. Lalna and Rythian glance at each other, gazes drifting up to the merry sprig of green and red above their head before looking at each other again. 

By now, everybody who knows them has taken notice and are waiting with bated breath for the inevitable.

“Now kiss! That’s what you’re supposed to do!” Nanosounds shouts from across the room, putting her mug down with more force than necessary, resulting in a hard ‘thunk’ on the table she’s sitting at.

 

It’s followed by a whoop of excited encouragement from a slightly drunk Strife follows, along with the wooden ‘thud’ of Strife falling out of his seat at having stood up too quickly and toppling over as a result.

Lalna and Rythian remain where they stand, shifting awkwardly having the obvious pointed out for them. Lalna coughs into one hand, said hand moving to rub the back of his flushed neck as he eyes Rythian, hope burning bright in his eyes.

Promising, by Ravs’ standards; he’s always been careful to pick people who’d seemed the most compatible with each other.

Rythian just looks like he’s died a little on the inside, his cheeks a flaming red from the alcohol or he’s just as embarrassed. He’s pinned under the weight of expectation, wanting to play into it and at the same time, not wishing to.

When Lalna lifts his head, Rythian starts, appearing to jump out of his skin before winking out of existence. 

A disappointed groan ripples through the room. Ravs sighs. He’s forgotten about Rythian’s teleporter.

“He chickened out,” Zoeya observes from besides him, smothering her laughter under a hand, the other one wrapped securely around her mug’s handle. She takes a sip, eyes sparkling with clear amusement. “Somebody owes me ten dollars,” She wryly notes, looking in the direction of one Will Strife (who is blissfully unaware).

“He _cheated_ ,” Ravs corrects, not missing the crushing disappointment that’d crossed Lalna’s face the moment Rythian had decided to disappear.

Nilesy leans across the counter to give Lalna a consoling pat on the shoulder, proceeding to press a brown, cat-shaped cookie into his hand (stolen from a nearby plate on the counter). Lalna’s fingers curl around it automatically, turning his hand with the palm facing up so he can peer at it.

“There, there, there’s plenty of fish in the sea,” Nilesy consoles like he’s cheering up a small child cheated out of a promised treat by a wily sibling.

Lalna glances down at the cookie in his hand, biting the inside of his cheek to suppress his laughter. Any lingering disappointment from Rythian’s unexpected stunt instantly evaporates, replaced by an unabashed childish delight at the cookie in his hand.

The cat-shaped cookie has tiny, squiggly whiskers poorly iced on it (never mind how Nilesy had managed to even track down _icing_ on Pandora; wonders never ceased in Sanctuary Hole). There’s even a little _face_ to go with the whiskers. 

“I am keeping this cookie forever,” Lalna declares with the enthusiasm of a child who has been successfully distracted. Nilesy preens, chuckling, clearly pleased with his reaction.

“I appreciate you wanting to keep the cookie, but cookies are meant to be eaten, not admired,” He firmly says though amusement is clearly lurking under his tone, unable to be suppressed.

Lalna lifts the cookie to take a bite. “It’s _good_ ,” He says with a full mouth.

Ravs only barely catches the tail end of that conversation, having already spotted his next victims and is making his way towards the first. 

Zylus had arrived with Daltos but the two have since split up. Lalna had taken great pains to hide from the latter, even if the latter isn’t actually looking for him. 

Ravs knows that they’re keeping an eye on each other, even across the bar. He’s actually seen Zylus occasionally glancing in Daltos’ direction (and vice versa), the two pretending not to notice whenever they caught each other’s eye.

At the back of the bar, he finds Zylus talking to Xephos, knee-deep in a convoluted and heated philosophical conversation about A.I.’s and free will. 

Ravs taps Zylus on the shoulder, not at all ashamed about interrupting the two since Zylus looks close to punching Xephos in the face while Xephos is looking far too plastered to even realize how close they are to a world of pain.

Zylus all-too willingly goes with Ravs but not before bidding Xephos goodbye but it’s muttered under his breath while he pointedly looks away. Xephos absently nods, only for Honeydew to leap upon the chance to invite them to a card game that they easily agree to.

Honeydew is clearly taking advantage of Xephos’ inebriated state to secure easy wins. There’s no question that the two will duck out early since the party isn’t even at the halfway point in time. Ravs leaves Zylus at the counter in Nilesy’s very capable hands.

Daltos proves a little harder to track down but Ravs finds him sitting at a table with the Bloody Bandits, _of all people_. Of course he’d gravitate towards those of his own kind, even if relations between their clans have been rocky, as of late.

He’s loathe to leave the poker game that he’s currently involved in, but all Ravs has to do is mention Zylus for Daltos to toss his hand down and pocket his winnings, pushing away from the table to stand.

“Who did he punch this time?” He says while rolling his eyes as he follows Ravs to the bar, people hastily moving out of his way upon recognizing him. If Daltos notices, he doesn’t outwardly react to it.

“I thought you’d have done the punching tonight,” Ravs easily jokes.

“Only if they ask nicely first,” Daltos points out in a half-joking tone and a faint smile.

Upon reaching the bar, Ravs stealthily manoeuvres him so that he’s standing next to Zylus. The two of them are unaware of each other until Ravs steps back behind the counter, displacing Nilesy who drifts toward another side to attend to refills there.

“Refill, Zylus?” Ravs asks with the innocence of someone who knows precisely what he’s doing but is going to claim otherwise when asked about it. “You too, Daltos? By the way, mind the mistletoe.”

It works like a charm. The two stare at him for a moment before they turn to one another, expressions going perfectly blank. They look up at the mistletoe innocently dangling above their heads. Ten uneventful seconds pass with Ravs being mildly disappointed as a result.

That is, until Daltos _smirks_. Wariness bleeds out of Zylus’ posture when he tenses up all over, as if preparing for a possible attack but all Daltos does is raise one of his hands to fold it into a fist (the motion deliberately slow and unthreatening). Confusion flickers over Zylus’ face.

Lightning quick, Daltos kissed the knuckles of his hand and before Zylus can react, he _punches him in the face_.

The punch hadn’t been that hard (from Ravs and Daltos’ perspectives), but Zylus’ head snaps up and he staggers back. One of his hands flies upward to his face to try to stem the blood trickling from his nose. When Zylus looks at them, he’s blinking back tears of pain. 

When he takes his hand away, there’s purple marring the left side of his face; Ravs can tell that Daltos had deliberately aimed his punch there to avoid breaking the monocle Zylus is wearing.

“ _Why?_ ” Zylus breathes, stunned, through grit teeth, clearly feeling the sting of betrayal. Ravs tries not to laugh at the look on his face, feeling the tiniest bit guilty for putting him in the situation in the first place (having had no idea that Daltos would have punched him to get out of it).

In comparison, Daltos clearly finds the entire event an absolute riot, judging by his laughter. He flexes the hand he’d used to punch.

“I kissed you with my fist, that totally counts,” He casually says as if it perfectly explains his actions, clapping the same hand onto Zylus’ shoulder.

Zylus nods, his face going dangerously blank, outwardly appearing to have smothered his outrage. Ravs moves to intervene, recognizing the signs but he reacts too late.

In the next second, Zylus tackles Daltos, the two of them falling to the floor with Daltos somehow still _laughing_ the entire time. Ravs vaults over the counter, separating the two of them as people back up with cries of alarm and shouts that alert the entire bar to a brewing brawl.

“Time out!” Ravs hastily tells the two of them, managing to drag Zylus off Daltos. Daltos gets to his feet with a grin, shoulders shaking as he barely manages to suppress his laughter, only a little ruffled by the entire incident. 

Ravs keeps a firm hold on the back of Zylus’ jacket as he drags him towards the back room where the medical supplies are kept. Around them, murmurs of disappointment at the narrowly averted brawl eventually die down, replaced by the return of normal conversation.

“Just one punch,” Zylus says, valiantly attempting to wriggle out of Ravs’ hold on him. “Please?” He shoots a hopeful look at Ravs.

“Not in my bar,” Ravs firmly says. “Let’s get you patched up.” Zylus heaves a tiny, disappointed sigh, stopping his struggle to walk back over to Daltos and beat the everloving shit out of him. He visibly perks up as Ravs proceeds to lightly add, “If you have to punch him, do it when you two step outside.”

When Ravs emerges from the back room with a patched up Zylus, it’s to a giant cheer that shakes the entire bar’s foundation as Saberial and Zoeya have locked lips under the mistletoe, Saberial dipping Zoeya low.

It’s rather romantic and almost everybody seems to think so, Zoeya and Saberial being received by a universal enthusiasm that threatens to blow the roof off the bar.

Some of the people in the bar are shouting lewd suggestions but it’s mostly drowned out by the other sounds in the bar. Before Ravs can walk over to ask them to kindly cease or get the fuck out, Teep quietly appears behind them.

The blue of their knife flashes under the lights of the bar, neatly stabbing each of the offenders several times in the chest. Teep pockets the knife and saunters off as if they’d just been passing by before any of them can realize what had just happened.

From the relative safety of the bar’s second floor, Rythian casts a cautious glance over the crowd to see if anybody will notice what he’s about to do. His fingers twitch. The bodies vanish before they hit the floor. 

Ravs makes a mental note to empty the dumpster behind the bar in the morning; he catches Rythian’s eye to which he responds in the way of an approving nod. It’d gotten the job done and without causing a commotion, compared to how he usually did it.

Turps is too drunk to notice any of the citizens being stabbed and mysteriously disappearing into thin air, shouting ‘encore’ at the two ladies who have since broken apart with a giggle to gaze lovingly at each other, pink in the face.

“Aw,” Nilesy happily sighs from the counter besides him. Lomadia walks by (wearing his hat), stopping briefly to engage him in conversation before requesting skag jerky from Ravs for her rakk.

As Ravs ducks into the back room to see if he still has any, he spies the three members of Hat Corp. messing around in a booth.

A drunk Ross licks a long, wet stripe up Trottimus’ cheek, much to his loud disgust at the perversion of a simple kiss on the cheek. Alsmiffy proceeds to affectionately headbutt the two with a hollow ‘donk’ in lieu of taking off their gas mask to kiss them. Or they’ve forgotten they’re wearing it.

A minor scuffle breaks out but it’s not anything that’ll require a warning from Ravs (provided alsmiffy keeps it flame-free and the three of them don't break anything or harm anybody else).

When Ravs comes back with the skag jerky, Lalnable and Lomadia have accidentally backed into each other, the two looking equal parts mortified and unwilling when Nilesy wordlessly points up.

“Nope,” The two of them instantly go, stepping back with nervous laughter escaping them.

“You sure? Last chance to do so,” Nilesy comments, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

“You’ve been hanging around Ravs too much,” Lalnable says with a slight sneer. The alcohol has loosened him up to where he’s tolerable to most people this evening, especially Will Strife (and with the exception of Rythian and Nanosounds, as usual). “Where is he? I need a refill and he’s clearly not here doing his job...”

“Looking for me?” Ravs coyly says from behind him, taking it as his cue to appear. Lalnable starts and jumps about half a metre in the air with a bitten off sound of surprise, whirling around to face him. 

“No!” Lalnable denies, fleeing to hide behind Lalna. He attempts to glare at Ravs from across the room but it’s offset by the rising color in his cheeks. 

For a second, Ravs seriously debates walking over there with his drink just to see what’ll happen but decides to send Nilesy in his stead to spare him the embarrassment. He’ll let the memories of tonight plague Lalnable during his hangover tomorrow do that for him.

Behind him, Strippin and Benji lean in closer and closer to one another to see how close they can lean in until one of them chickens out, the other person claiming a win. 

That is, until somebody passing by accidentally bumps one of them with a muttered apology, sending their faces sailing into one another’s. 

Strippin and Benji proceed to scream for the next five minutes. Ravs rolls his eyes at their childishness and without being requested to, brings them glasses of water plus a small lecture about ‘no screaming in the bar unless it’s just the two of you in a room upstairs’.

All good things must come to an end. The time comes when he has to close up the bar as the party winds down. It’s a successful Mercenary Day, Ravs thinks as he shooes the last of the drunks out and checks the bar for any stragglers passed out in the booths. 

People bid him goodbye and he absently returns them while stacking empty mugs and glasses to take them to the kitchen (as tomorrow’s chore).

Once the bar has been mostly cleaned up, he heavily leans on the counter, exhausted. He knows that he’ll wake up hilariously late tomorrow but he can’t help but be pleased at how the night had gone, still feeling the joy warm his heart at seeing friendly faces faring well. 

It’s a rare enough occurrence on Pandora for him to want to treasure it.

To his knowledge, Nilesy’s the only person who’s still in the bar with him, finishing up his sweeping of the ground floor. He slyly slinks over after resting his broom against a table, hands clasped behind his back, a devious grin on his face.

Ravs fails to notice him until he’s drawn up beside him, delivering a chaste peck to his cheek before skipping away.

“Good night!” Nilesy calls out over his shoulder before vanishing up the stairs and into his room. The door creaks shut behind him.

Downstairs, Ravs blinks, replaying the event in his mind. That makes Nilesy the first person who’s managed to get a kiss on him under the mistletoe, just when he’d thought he’d be safe at closing time.

Still, that’s certainly _something_ to think about. Cheeky bastard. He lifts a hand to his cheek, lightly touching the spot where Nilesy had kissed him. It’s been a long time since he’d blushed but he finds that he doesn’t mind, allowing himself this one small guilty pleasure, just this once.

Movement out of the corner of his eye along one of the walls catches his attention. He looks over to see Teep standing there, posture rigid at being witness to something they shouldn’t have. They relax upon being seen by him, stopping their sneaking towards the exit to straighten up, crossing their arms across their chest. 

Under all those layers on their face, Ravs can feel a knowing smirk being directed at him.

Ravs smiles at them, making sure that there’s a menacing edge to it. Without moving from the counter and as if he has all the time in the world, he moves his hand to his throat, drawing a single, sharp line across it. If he’d been holding a knife, he would have drawn blood.

“I know where you live, so don't even think of telling anybody,” He says, his voice lowered so that only he and Teep can hear each other (not wishing to wake up Nilesy by choosing to raise a ruckus by shouting).

Teep mockingly raises both hands as if to huffily say ‘wasn’t going to’ before opening the front door and slipping out into the night, closing it softly behind them. 

He’s going to hold them to their discretion. It wouldn’t do for people to know he’s that easily flustered and at the hands of Nilesy. That being said, it really is a Mercenary Day for him to remember.

\--

At the Sipsco. compound, Sjin lifts the framed picture of Sips up from his desk to tenderly kiss the glass. He draws back with a wistful sigh, leaving the picture on his desk so that it’s facing him.

He scrubs his face with a tired hand, wishing Sips is still with him, feeling his absence like more than ever (a raw wound that still stings whenever he so much as stumbles across anything that serves as a reminder of him).

**Author's Note:**

> (holiday love is a play on runaway love. get it.)
> 
> this clocked in at around 4000 words. also, there’s a series of comics done by the fabulous siins that accompany this bit of writing, which you can find over [here](http://borderlandscast.tumblr.com/post/135844019564/beyond-the-borderlands-holiday-love)! they’re amazing so DEF CHECK THEM OUT.


End file.
